Despite the fact that no sexual life cycle has been documented for this species, N. glabratus strains of both mating types are commonly found.

[2] N. glabratus is of special relevance in nosocomial infections due to its innately high resistance to antifungal agents, specifically the azoles.

[3] These genes, which in N. glabratus are mostly encoded in the subtelomeric region of the chromosome, have their expression highly activated by environmental cues, so that the organism can adhere to biotic and abiotic surfaces in microbial mats.

Adhesin expression is the suspected first mechanism by which N. glabratus forms fungal biofilms, proved to be more resistant to antifungals than the planktonic cells.

Skin disease diagnosis is difficult, as cultures collected from swabs and biopsies will test negative for fungus and a special assessment is required.

N. glabratus ferments and assimilates only glucose and trehalose, opposing to Candida species and this repertoire of sugar utilization is used by several commercially available kits for identification.

The largest phylogenetic study to date about Saccharomycotina, also known as budding yeasts, indicated in 2018 that the (currently construed) genus Candida is found in Pichiaceae, CUG-Ser1 clade, Phaffomycetaceae and Saccharomycetaceae.

Consequently, despite that the name Candida evokes a unitary notion of candidiasis, the pathogenic power of some budding yeasts is a paraphyletic trait shared by several subphyla with different kinds of metabolism.